Patch 4.0.6 Release Date?
A lot of people have been asking me for a release date, and to be honest at this point I'm not really sure I have one. The last 2 PTR builds (13561 and 13580) were both flagged as Release Candidate but the last one isn't even deployed on PTRs.

Also, someone did something funny with the official blog and put up a Patch 4.0.6 Official Notes [PLACEHOLDER] post as a test, it would be logical to see Patch 4.0.6 on live realms next week after that but with an undeployed PTR Build in my hands I'm not really going to confirm anything before Monday, and personally I wouldn't be surprised if it happened the week after.

Patch 4.0.6 - PTR Notes Update

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker)

PvPTol Barad

Attacking forces will receive a 200% capture speed bonus when they control 2 keeps.

Defending forces will receive a 200% capture speed bonus when they control all 3 keeps.

Daily quest creatures, herbs, minerals, etc. will only spawn when Tol Barad is in the quest phase between battles. There will be 5-minute and 1-minute warnings before the quest phase ends. The quest phase ends 15 minutes before the battle for Tol Barad begins and queuing is made available. At that time any players in the daily micro dungeons will be ported just outside. This does not apply to Tol Barad Peninsula or the daily quests there.

Strength of Soul now occurs when the priest casts Inner Focus on oneself, rather than Power Word: Shield. In addition, Strength of Soul now also causes the priest to become immune to silence, interrupt, and dispel effects for 2/4 seconds after using Inner Focus.

ProfessionsFishing

Rare fishing poles now have a chance to be found in the Bag of Fishing Treasures earned via the Stormwind and Orgrimmar Fishing daily quests.

Jewelcrafting

Wrath of the Lich King purple, green, and orange gems have been increased in cost to match red, blue, and yellow epic gems (220 Justice Points). Burning Crusade epic gems have been increased in cost to match the most expensive Wrath of the Lich King gems.

Items

Item Sets

Normal PvE helms (item level 359) no longer have a chance to drop from Nefarian or Cho'gall on Heroic difficulty. Instead, the Heroic PvE helm and shoulder pieces (item level 372) only require their associated Crown/Shoulders of the Forlorn tokens to purchase, and do not require players to obtain the normal helms or shoulders first.

Nefarian World 2nd kill by MethodMethod killed Nefarian a few hours ago and is the 2nd guild in the world to take down the big black dragon. It's also the world first kill since the hotfix preventing class stacking but technically, that wasn't an exploit, so I'll just let people debate endlessly about it in comments. Congratulations to them!

Statement from MethodNefarian down, putting us at 13/13 (finally a breath of fresh air!!!). Thumbs up for the dedication shown by our raiding team.

The current heroic difficulty of raiding is both enjoyable and demanding. We can all welcome, with open arms, the more challenging raid content, but the sheer quantity of content available since Cataclysm launch has required more time investment than ever before to remain competitive. Personally I would have welcomed a 'reasonable' gate-system or similar to allow for more real life time the past ~2months, especially with xmas/new years/exams etc. Taking a few day breaks over the festive period only to be notified that other guilds were currently raiding obviously wasn't ideal!

This tier of raiding has unfortunately contained multiple bugs, with bosses like Atramedes, Sinestra, and Nefarian standing out. Sinestra had some notable issues for us; having infinite lines at Twilight orbs making progress prior to this current reset difficult. Twilight Flames properly spawning at the Egg locations in phase 1 was also fixed recently on the fight (can see they are non existent @ Paragon's video). The issues on Nefarian are of more concern, with Blizzard seemingly overlooking certain class abilities on a key encounter mechanic. Unsure as to why it was waited with until after a guild had killed Nefarian before applying the fix, especially with "top guilds" apparently under surveillance, such delayed fixes are harmful to the 'PvE race'.

Hoping that Blizzard can keep up with the quality of heroic raid difficulty while considering the quantity available and as always more vigorous encounter testing/monitoring.

/Sco

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Dalaran/Shattrath Portals
Portals existed to give people access back to capital cities to reach auction houses and class trainers. Auction houses and class trainers were kept in the old world capitals because we knew that if we didn't require people to go back the old world would be a ghost town.

Those portals had a few fun side effects like letting people warp all around the world toot-sweet at the shake of a nose to do anything they felt like. This was not the intent of the portals and regardless if people enjoyed being able to zip around, it is not the intent of our travel as it exists now to allow them to do so.

Now that the old world capitals are the major hubs in the current expansion, the expansion zones are in Azeroth which keeps more people around, and we've decided to add trainers and auction houses to Shattrath and Dalaran to aid in the leveling experience, the portals no longer serve their original purpose and were removed.

[...] We have no plans to implement the old portals back in the game, but thank you for you reasons as to why they should. They've been noted. (Source)

Blizzard Art Gallery Update

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker)

The World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Art Gallery has been updated with five pieces representing the Warcraft universe. Make your way through the gallery to take a glimpse into the process behind bringing Blizzard games to life, and the artistry those games have inspired.

The high res version of the Kil'Jaeden artwork is a 17280 x 10368 image (16mb!), you can probably make an awesome poster out of it.

So far it seems it will most likely be the Jeweled one and the Undead pole (both from WotLK)

Anyone know is the old fishing pole enchant going to be added to the capital daily as well?

Originally Posted by Potentio

Method is mad that they got no world first kills during this tier. Atramedes was exploited (out of the room) and Magmaw adds were kited to Defense System room and back.

What is the advantage between those skeleton kited in the room or out of the room other than having more room? Magmaw can and will still spill lava and shadow things on the kiter and skeletons still leave fire patchs anyway.

The very same page that your wrote in if you scroll up you can see a response from someone from Method talking about their comment and picture. I won't make fun of you, but yeah it's this type of failed insight that gives people such incorrect conclusions and thoughts.

But whatever long live the trolls, I guess.

Fail troll is fail : /. You miss the point of my message, but grats on failing.

Fail troll is fail : /. You miss the point of my message, but grats on failing.

Ha, talk about someone replying with absolutely no substance. I missed the point of your first message? Well it appears that message has change a bit since what I quoted from your original post isn't there anymore. Which is a nice way of saying you were wrong on the internet. Though I would have to say there are some things I agree with you on your first post.

I'm sorry but I had to comment here, They removed portals because they didnt want us to "zip around, quickly" around the world? OKAY, then why are there still instant dungeon teleports? When at start of wrath we needed Summoning Stones at the entrance, those have been useless forever and still remain. Yet we cant have portals back? That may not relate to the two things I just mentioned, but thats my take on it... They remove 1 thing but keep instant LFD teleports. IDK maybe im just QQing

Did you really read what they said about portals at all? You are just QQing. They put the portals in to begin with so people in Outlands (and later in Northrend) could easily reach auction houses and class trainers. They specifically kept auction houses and class trainers in the original major cities so that they wouldn't become ghost towns once people got to content that wasn't on the original two continents. Now that Cata is out and most of the new content is on either EK or Kal, people are spending most of their time in Org or SW and there is no risk of them becoming ghost towns at this point. The whole point of the portals to begin with was so that the original content places wouldn't become ghost towns after BC and Cata came out. And now there are class trainers and auction houses in both Shatt and Dal, so the people who are leveling through BC and Wrath content don't need to come back to SW or Org to train and access the auction house. There is no real point to the portals anymore. It has nothing to do with them not wanting us to "zip around quickly around the world." You can still move quickly around the world if you're trying to get to Cata zones. There are portals to those places. Your hearth stone only has a 15 minute cooldown (if you're guild has the perk). There are a lot of other tools now that can be used in place of a hearth stone (like archaeology rares, guild rewards, etc). I don't even notice the lack of portals in Dal. But then again, I don't see any reason to go to Dal. And if I do, I can almost always find a guildie who is really to come port me there and then I can just hearth back to SW.

The point of teleporting into dungeons via the LFD tool and summoning stones serve a completely different purpose than portals ever did. Those are meant to be used so that we don't have to wait ages for people to fly/port/whatever to get to dungeons and raids. I guarantee you that if people had to wait for 25 people to fly/run/swim/etc to get to a raid entrance there would be a lot less people raiding.

"Wrath of the Lich King purple, green, and orange gems have been increased in cost to match red, blue, and yellow epic gems (220 Justice Points). Burning Crusade epic gems have been increased in cost to match the most expensive Wrath of the Lich King gems."

Haha, nice way to nerf vendoring TBC gems as viable way to dump JP :P

I never would have thought to do this.

Also some people already have 5000 valor tokens, wtf? Valor is a pain unless you raid (I don't have time), I don't want to run heroics all day, especially when some of them take like over an hour to do.

---------- Post added 2011-01-30 at 06:47 PM ----------

Originally Posted by shanghai

Did you really read what they said about portals at all? You are just QQing. They put the portals in to begin with so people in Outlands (and later in Northrend) could easily reach auction houses and class trainers. They specifically kept auction houses and class trainers in the original major cities so that they wouldn't become ghost towns once people got to content that wasn't on the original two continents. Now that Cata is out and most of the new content is on either EK or Kal, people are spending most of their time in Org or SW and there is no risk of them becoming ghost towns at this point. The whole point of the portals to begin with was so that the original content places wouldn't become ghost towns after BC and Cata came out. And now there are class trainers and auction houses in both Shatt and Dal, so the people who are leveling through BC and Wrath content don't need to come back to SW or Org to train and access the auction house. There is no real point to the portals anymore. It has nothing to do with them not wanting us to "zip around quickly around the world." You can still move quickly around the world if you're trying to get to Cata zones. There are portals to those places. Your hearth stone only has a 15 minute cooldown (if you're guild has the perk). There are a lot of other tools now that can be used in place of a hearth stone (like archaeology rares, guild rewards, etc). I don't even notice the lack of portals in Dal. But then again, I don't see any reason to go to Dal. And if I do, I can almost always find a guildie who is really to come port me there and then I can just hearth back to SW.

The point of teleporting into dungeons via the LFD tool and summoning stones serve a completely different purpose than portals ever did. Those are meant to be used so that we don't have to wait ages for people to fly/port/whatever to get to dungeons and raids. I guarantee you that if people had to wait for 25 people to fly/run/swim/etc to get to a raid entrance there would be a lot less people raiding.

It's not about QQing, it's about being consistent.

I understand that they don't want people hanging around in those zones, but what about new characters that need to get to outlands or northrend? Sure, I use my AT tabard to easily get to Northrend and if I wanted to spend 6800g i'd get the kirin tor ring. Sure, there's not much to do in those zones, but for those of us (me) that are still doing AT for the rewards, or going there to do the dailies for fishing/cooking hoping that those last recipies would drop, it's now tedious instead of useful.

Here, if they're going to make it hard for you to go to the old zones, at least put some incentive to stay in the reworked ones. What do I have left to do in Azeroth?

-Hyjal for Loremaster of Cata
-TB for the spectral wolf and maybe a tabard and pet (already have the drake)
-Kalimdor and EK for Loremaster
-Arch grinding
-some vanilla raiding rep, maybe try for the legendaries, meh

That's it. Put the recipies back in the fishing dailies, (you know, for chef title and such) give me more things to do here instead. What do I have left in the rest of the world?

Northrend:
-finish frenzy heart for the two achievements
-get some bros to ICC a bit for the title I guess from honored
-get some drakes from uld and icc maybe
-try and get the drake from sarth and maybe the sarth10 title
-maybe try and get that stupid fucking ring
-finish nerubian arch. I got the vryukul axe as my second solve so that's pretty much over with.

outlands:
-I only have 4 reps to exalted here (maghar, spore, netherwing, skyguard) so the rest of those (oh my god do not remind me about ogrila)
-netherstorm for loremaster of outlands
-crawdaddy fishing crap
-some dungeons and raids
-finish draenei arch. I got the orc helm as the first solve so that's mostly over with.

after that it's just pvp and seasonal achievements for the violet drake (I took a break for a year, and started during wrath). I guess I could go for bloodsail or the exalted or insane, but that's way too much work.

Other than that, I've been playing alts now because I've gotten bored of Retribution.

I still don't get why ppl are using their excess JP to buy gems to vendor?! Even if you're buying them to cut you could get far more gold per JP if you bought the ilvl 213 epic BoE bracers from the old valor point vendor in Dalaran. Each bracer costs about 350 points and could probably sell for 300-700g depending on your server, hell maybe even more. People as a whole have more gold now then ever before and when I bought 3 of those bracers the other day to get rid of some JP I just stuck them on the AH for 500g each to see if there was any interest and all 3 sold within the day.

500g (on average) for 350 JP vs maybe 30g for 220 JP. Even when they bring in the new cata mat vendor, it would still be a better idea to buy those bracers, sell them, and use the money to buy whatever cata mat you want.

Except that stats on these bracers are worse than first ilevel 272 quest rewards. You need to find an extremely stupid buyer to sell these for 300g+.

It's a question of keeping it controlled. In terms of manpower, it means that defenders need to maintain only half the personnel of the attacking force at a given keep to maintain their grip on it.

Defenders get all 3 when the game starts, but that make little difference. The out numbered defender will obiously get killed faster than the attacker and you need to be alive to gain capture points. The base would probably turn grey and lose the advantage before defender's reinforcements arrived, as the defender no longer host half the number of men against the attacker on that base.

Once each faction gets past 25 players in TB, the numbers for each faction stay very close to even. If your faction cant get 25 to join and actively play on offense (thanks for nuking the gatherer nodes), no buff is going to help change the outcome.

Assuming relatively even numbers are playing, the only advantage for the attacker is that it takes longer for a defender to return to a keep when they die. The new buff will make it a little easier to zerg the defenders and take control before they can return en-masse. Even if the defenders switch keeps, they still might not make it in time to beat the sped up control bar.

If the defenders split up on main defense and try to hold 2 keeps instead to prevent the attacker's buff, they still have the travel disadvantage and will be a little more vulnerable to zergs.

I'm still not sure any of this is enough to dislodge the defender on a regular basis. Balanced would having the faction cap start at 10 vs. 25, eliminating the rez spawn distance for defenders, and having the winning condition be offense getting 2 keeps out of 3. Give it your best shot, pile up at two keeps and may the better geared/playing side win.

I'm still not sure any of this is enough to dislodge the defender on a regular basis. Balanced would having the faction cap start at 10 vs. 25, eliminating the rez spawn distance for defenders, and having the winning condition be offense getting 2 keeps out of 3. Give it your best shot, pile up at two keeps and may the better geared/playing side win.

"Balance" is a relative thing. Blizz made it clear that they wanted to make an incentive to actually show up and defend. The only way to do this that doesn't result in win trading is to make the recapture process painful. They've admitted that currently capping TB is more painful than they intended and the change will definitely increase the successful attack rates in Tol Barad. They'll also award coordination and intelligent play on both sides. They won't, however, make the zone constantly traded and hopefully won't leave the holding faction feeling that defending is a waste of time, which is what Blizzard saw on many servers with Wintergrasp and what they wanted to move away from in Cataclysm.

And to be fair, defense is always easier than offence. Sieges are much more painful for the attacker than for the defender.

Personally, I like the cutoff point for faction numbers balance where it is. The way I see it, if a faction population cannot muster a bare 25 people to defend, they deserve to be outnumbered.

Professions
Fishing
Rare fishing poles now have a chance to be found in the Bag of Fishing Treasures earned via the Stormwind and Orgrimmar Fishing daily quests.

About damn time!

Not really, in my opinion this is a very disappointing update, recycled rewards yet again

The current lot of fishing dailys are just plain awful.

Once you've completed the achievement, leveled your fishing to 525 there's absolutely no incentive to continue doing them (*)
Why ? Well apart from the low gold payout the biggest disincentive are the rewards from the Bag of Shiny Things:

Weather Beaten Fishing Hat, been around since Burning Crusade patch 2.4.0. 25th March 2008
Strand Crawler Pet, been around since Wrath of the Lich King patch 3.1.0. 14th April 2009

That's it. Two recycled rewards from the past two expansions. All the other drops from the bag are low value vendor trash.